Monday, August 18, 2008

Dizzies Press Release: Samantha Hunt

Please come enjoy a lunchtime performance in one of New York City's most storied squares. You are invited to the Word for Word event at the Bryant Park Reading Room. Let us write the latest chapter of history!

First Bryant Park was a forest where sweetgum and bloodroot grew.

THEN it was a hunting ground

THEN it was an escape route for General Washington’s defeated troops after the bloody Battle of Brooklyn

THEN it was a potter's field (we are lunching on top of dead bodies!)

THEN it was the site of the Civil War draft riots (an event triggered by New York City's most gruesome moment: the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum)

THEN it was the site of the dreamy Crystal Palace

THEN it was the site of the Crystal Palace's charred remains

THEN it fell under the dangerous shadow of the Sixth Avenue El where it would stay for 56 years

THEN it was called "one of the most disreputable parks in the city" by Architecture Magazine

THEN it was the site of copious muggings and delirious drug deals

THEN it became the well manicured site of Midtown working stiff half-hour lunches

AND NOW THINGS GET REALLY WEIRD! On Wednesday, August 20 from 12:30pm to 1:45pm Samantha Hunt will read from The Invention of Everything Else, a novel about the life of heroic Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla -- a man who not only fed the pigeons of the Bryant Park daily but also believed he was married to one of them!

She will be joined by her friends and musical idols PINATALAND as they conjure the strangeness of history, drawing inspiration from the all-but-forgotten events of the past 200 years for their brand new album, Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2.